MAORI PEDIGREES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 46, 31 August 1928, Page 4

MAORI PEDIGREES

VALUABLE RECORDS . "Unless the records are recovered in the far-flung islands of the Pacific, we shall never be able to determine when Polynesian cosmogonies became records of human ancestry," said Sir Apirana Ngata to the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Historical. Association last evqning. "Yet," he went' on^ to say, "the Maori schools ot learning began their genealogical record in the mists of prehistoric time, until there appear on it names generally accepted as those of famous navigators, priests, or warriors. From one or other or a number o£ these it is the pride of every Maori tribe and of every family in it to trace descent, and the Whafe Wanangas have preserved the record intact. Here and there are interpolations or transpositions inseparable • from orally transmitted pedigrees. Tw.o schools have been known to differ bitterly over an intermarriage or the .order of: seniority or the sex of the children of an ancestor. The Arawas are still disputing over the parentage of one of their ancestors,-and will not publish1 the tribal history until the dispute is settled. ' . "No one," he added, "has yet sketched the growth, of a ; typical Polynesian tribe. The opportunity is offered to students to study the inception, growth, development, and stereotyping of such an institution in this country, based on genealogical data, enriched with contemporaneous tradition. The recital of the record may be arrested at interesting points to indicate where a family has branched off to found a tribe or Hub-trib», or where a tribe began to adopt its comprehensive name, or where an ancestress, becoming jealous of the fact that her children are becoming known as the children of their father, removes to another locality with some of them, where her name may be applied to them and so I achieve distraction." : ':- „ .